Into the Wilderness

As we motored across mainly back roads into the West, I couldn’t help but note how many massive windmills and pecking oil rigs dot the flat and expansive landscape.

There also were frequent signs advertising water for sale on an industrial scale, which made me feel better about coming from a state blessed with a relative abundance of the stuff so critical to life.

After leaving the rough-hewn rocky mountains that shelter Carlsbad Caverns, it was off through Artesia, Alamogordo and Las Cruces. We finally arrived in Silver City in the Black Mountains and panoramic vistas that characterized the Gila Wilderness region of Southwest New Mexico.

En route, we paused for lunch at the historically popular Lodge in Cloudcroft perched in the Lincoln National Forest at 8,600 feet, among the highest elevations of any U.S. town. The bustling little town reminded me of a mini Eureka Springs with its eateries and storefront shops along Burro Avenue offering everything from banana-nut pancakes to pottery and incense. There, we met David Sanchez, the owner of a store called On the Mountain, who said he was born in Pine Bluff then moved as a child to El Paso and later became a career firefighter.

Wherever I travel across America, I invariably happen across someone with a connection to Arkansas.

Winding our way across Southern New Mexico past Las Cruces (City of the Crosses) nestled against the Organ Mountains, then turning north at Deming, we arrived in Silver City hoping to spend the next day with friends climbing into ancient homes that form the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. As with Carlsbad Caverns, there was no charge in honor of the National Park Service’s Centennial Celebration.

The Gila Monument, designated by President Theodore Roosevelt’s executive proclamation of 1907, is about 40 miles from Silver City, near the reported birthplace of Geronimo at the headwaters of the Gila River (that in places reminds me of Crooked Creek back home). Here in the mountainous and desert Southwest, sunlight seems filtered differently and dry air often carries the faint fragrances of conifers such as junipers, piñons and Ponderosa pines.

The mountainous drive from the charming, artsy Silver City to the dwellings is among the most spectacular I’ve seen in our country. It’s no exaggeration to say some views of wilderness and mountains can yank one’s breath away.

Inside the protected 533-acre cliff dwelling park, as our one-mile-long loop to visit the dwellings began, a park ranger told us to expect an upward hike, especially steep for about 200 feet, aided by some winding rock stairs. But not to worry, there were benches sufficient for a geezer to catch his breath.

So up we went, across several foot bridges, steadily along the trail that followed a creek beneath the towering sandstone bluffs. For those from Arkansas, the altitude can often leave one breathing deeply and more often for oxygen.

As many as 30 other visitors either followed behind or led the way up the inclines and onto those twisting stairs that halfway up seemed darned-near endless. Heightened ciphering abilities told me there had to be about 200 of them.

At the top, a path led to the dwellings with five natural caves housing 46 rooms of varying size. I soon found myself peering into the gorge directly below, imagining what life had to have been like when as many as 15 families called this home between 1200 and 1300 A.D. It’s obvious from the blackened ceilings, including that covering the largest room, that they used fire to light and cook.

No one knows what happened to the occupants.

The adobe-like concoction used to construct rooms within the caves has been strong enough to withstand seven centuries. Some rooms had small windows facing both inside and out. The Mogollons had created these spaces within the shallow caves formed much earlier, during the volcanic Oligocene Epoch.

After being caught inside the dwellings to wait out a sudden thunderstorm, we descended a 13-rung wooden ladder and began our descent in the opposite direction from where we’d arrived. The trick to getting down in one piece was to walk slowly, ensuring each footfall was planted on solid rock before taking the next one. There’s a lot of loose gravel on those steps and the shortest route is a long drop straight down.

At the bottom, I learned that while Native Americans had long known about these fascinating cliff dwellings, it wasn’t until 1878 that a Silver City man and his friends made a trek into the Gila and returned to tell about them. From there, people being people, it didn’t take long for looters to arrive and clean out most of the artifacts.

Those included mummified remains. But they missed one of a child discovered in 1912 and given to the Smithsonian Institution. I left that day wondering how I felt about anyone’s remains placed on display rather than left undisturbed to eternity.